


break me into a better me (i was slow to you)

by mysteriesofloves



Series: i'll blow out the flame (can you and me remain) [2]
Category: Gossip Girl (TV 2007)
Genre: 4x17 AU, F/M, Fluff and Angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-06
Updated: 2021-02-06
Packaged: 2021-03-17 20:41:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,391
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29231697
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mysteriesofloves/pseuds/mysteriesofloves
Summary: No part of this feels sudden.
Relationships: Dan Humphrey/Blair Waldorf
Series: i'll blow out the flame (can you and me remain) [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2146437
Comments: 10
Kudos: 69





	break me into a better me (i was slow to you)

Blair’s head slants to the side, narrowing her eyes at the metal sculpture, just about her height. He snorts a little, a snicker under his breath, and it makes her flinch. She doesn’t like being laughed at. Dan thinks it’s because she’s not used to it.

“Looking at it at ninety degrees isn’t going to suddenly make you understand it.”

“There’s nothing to understand,” she says, but tips her head further. He laughs again. He can’t help it. He likes the way she drawls and snips, the way plain words sound more cutting coming out of her mouth. It’s easier for him to think of Blair phonetically. Anything more would be getting ahead of himself.

“If you tilt any more your hat is gonna fall off.”

Her nose scrunches, and when it’s just the two of them, he kisses the little wrinkle. It always catches her off guard, makes her turn the kind of pink like holding a lit candle up close to your skin; a warm and fuzzy glow before the burn. 

It’s not just the two of them. His pinkie brushes hers, wanting to hold but not daring to.

She’s a whip-crack of a woman, turning on her heel and marching down the hall. He’s getting better at keeping up with her, but he always feels one step behind. It’s the academic in him, or maybe that lonely little outsider still trying to wax poetic; he can’t help but stay just a little bit away — just enough to try and watch the whole picture take place. 

People make way for her when she walks by. No one ever makes way for him. 

*

He takes a seat on the edge of the bed, careful not to disturb. She’s silk against overwashed cotton, a diamond in all his rough, gorgeous as a painting. No, better than a painting, her chest rising and falling. Better than a painting because she’s real even when she shouldn’t be. Even where she shouldn’t be.

“I can’t sleep when I’m being watched,” she mumbles. 

He smiles. “I’m admiring.” 

“Not you,” she says, eyes still closed. A finger pops up. “Him.”

“It’s just Cedric.”

The bed dips under him. She takes up most of it, limbs splayed out, but she scoots aside enough that he can lay down next to her. It’s automatic now, how she curls into him. 

“Ew,” she says, lids half-opened. “These boxers are terrible.”

“Take them off, then.”

Dan’s never had a problem making space for people in his life, but he likes how much Blair is willing to take up. She smells like amber, his nose nuzzling her neck, tongue coming out to lick across her jaw. Her hand comes harsh over his face, nails biting at his eyebrow.

He slides a hand under her slip, tickling her stomach until she’s breathless, her heel jamming against his shin, but no real effort made to stop him. Then lower, trapping her clit between the knuckles of his fore and middle fingers, dripping slow down his hand like bitter molasses. He gets her off like that, writhing in his palm, his other hand over her mouth so Ben won’t hear, too blissed out for her to fight it. She does after, though, fights it, gets him back, and maybe that’s what he wanted; to have her pin him to the bed and lave at him languidly until he has a lump in his throat. She hums, over and over, like teasing him tastes so impossibly good. Then she’s over him, slipping him inside her easily but not moving, scraping her teeth over his jaw playfully. She talks when she’s on top, things he wants to write down later but never does, things he's wanted to hear but never knew how to ask for. He doesn’t know how she knows. It takes a certain kind of intuition to hurt people the way she does, he thinks, and it must be the same thing. 

_ Say please,  _ she’s whispering now.  _ Come on, Humphrey, use your words. You’re supposed to be good at that. Say — _

He rolls them over, kissing her to shut her up. He wants her to give up the act for him, just for a little bit, wants her to know that it wouldn’t be losing. They keep playing these games, so they don’t have to look this thing they’re doing in the face. But it always ends like this, too-soft kisses and too-long eye contact. Not with a bang but. 

She pushes at a fallen Cedric, tumbled off the shelf from the force of the bed against the wall, until he lands plush-face first on the floor.

“Third person’s supposed to be a stranger,” she says. He laughs until he’s breathless, the ache in his stomach a clenched fist, ready to knock him out. 

  
  


*

Her hair hangs off the edge of the bed, long enough and low enough it just about grazes the floor. She huffs dramatically, rolling over onto her stomach, her feet kicking the air like a girl in one of Jenny’s movie night picks. 

“Come here,” he says, putting his book down and holding out his hand from where he sits at his desk. She skips over, bypassing it, moving to straddle him. His hand slides a smooth trail from her thigh to her hip to her ass, but she leans all the way forward and rests her head on his shoulder, her nose brushing his neck, and so he settles his hold on her lower back instead.

“What’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” she sighs. “That’s the problem.”

He hums thoughtfully. “Little Miss Contrary needs something to complain about?”

She pushes back up, pouting. He kisses her. He can’t help it. 

“I haven’t been this happy in a long time, Dan,” she says. He’d known well enough, could see it when she let him — like she is now, rosy-warm in the light of his room, brimming with vulnerability. It breaks his heart a little, that he didn't do something about it sooner. She looks away, swallows, then looks back with a little smile, having steeled herself. “God knows why.”

He traces her cheek, draws her forward to rest her forehead against his.  _ Let the armour fall, _ he’s saying.  _ I’m not hiding anything. I’m not waiting to make you bleed.  _

“Because I give  _ really _ great head.”

Blair laughs, a little squeak of a noise, having been caught off guard, and Dan loves it.

No, he doesn’t. He can’t. That’s what he always does; he falls in love too fast. It’s his fatal flaw, he thinks. The first crack that shatters every splintered relationship. He’s already flattened before they’re even ready to jump. 

(But no part of this feels like falling. It feels like finally waking up).

“Dorota thinks I’ve joined a cult,” she says. 

“As if you’d be such a follower,” the arm at her back winds around her tighter, pressing her firmly to him. He smoothes a palm down the back of her head, twists a finger around a curl. “If anything you’d start one.”

There’s a kiss to his neck, tentative almost, and Dan feels it everywhere.

“Even Serena noticed a difference,” she says. They tend to avoid the names of the usual suspects. He tucks a finger under her chin to lift it, leveling her to him.

“Then what’s the problem?”

“I’m waiting for it to hurt,” she says. Dan doesn’t think he’s ever seen her so open, her eyes as wide as a curious child’s. “It won’t, will it?”

“It won’t,” he says. “Not if I can help it.”

_ It was the worst year of my life,  _ her back against his front the other night, so she didn’t have to look at him even in the dark. Or so he couldn’t look at her.  _ And then it ended so suddenly.  _

(No part of this feels sudden. It feels like a long time coming). 

The hand at the back of her head tips her down enough that he can kiss her forehead, then guides her back to rest against him, fingers picking at her curls idly. 

“Do you think we should tell them?”

_ “Them?”  _ he muses, but his hand stalls. She doesn’t bother sitting up. He feels the look she’s giving him anyway. “I don’t know. They won’t understand.”

“They don’t have to,” Blair murmurs. “I do.”

“You want to tell them?”

The truth is, he doesn’t. He really doesn’t want anyone else to see this thing between them — whatever it is, this special thing.

“I’m no longer Queen B and you’re done being Serena’s jester,” she looks up hesitantly, like she needs confirmation. He rolls his eyes to keep up appearances, but nods, pressing his lips to her temple. They can hardly look at it themselves. 

“I want this to exist outside this room,” she says. “And it can’t unless we tell them.”

The faint din of Ben moving around the kitchen keeps him grounded in reality. Blair likes to live in a storybook, likes picture perfection. Maybe it’s uncharitable, but he’s surprised she wants to take this out from between the pages. She says, “We’ll tell them tonight, then. Agreed?”

Chuck’s party doesn't seem like the right place, but he wonders if that’s not the point. He shrugs, shifting her slightly. “Whatever you want, Waldorf.”

She sits up straighter, her small hands on his chest to level her, just enough that she can raise a brow at him. 

“Agreed,” he says. 

*

Dan’s always felt a little like a man amongst immortals at these things, penthouses with high descending staircases and glimmering partygoers, always acutely aware that he doesn’t bleed gold. And it’s always at these things he finds himself face to face with the aftermath of his hubris — his foolish thinking that he could ever be one of them. He doesn’t know when or where the chaos starts and ends — if it even does end. But the night dies down as suddenly as it sprung up, and he’s nursing a drink at the bar with phones buzzing updates in the pockets of him and everyone around him, and when Blair makes her way through the crowd; the look on her face, the nervous wring of her hands, the hush of her voice, that’s what it looks like. Tonight was supposed to be the first page. But it’s looking like the end.

She’s watching him with those wide eyes that he can’t bring himself to meet. He downs the rest of his drink as she speaks, sliding the empty glass along the counter to keep his hands busy. 

When he finally speaks, he says, “Serena’s gonna need us now more than ever.”

It’s the wrong thing to say. He can tell, from the way she recoils. But it’s the truth. He gestures for another drink at the realization that they’re the same thing.

“We knew this was a mistake when it started,” she says. He doesn’t let it hurt him, knowing she’s just

trying to cover up the chink in her armour. 

“We knew it was a bad idea,” he says. “It was never a mistake.”

“I knew this would happen,” she mutters, assuming that uptight air that grated him all throughout high school. “You should’ve, too.”

“You kissed me first,” he bites back childishly, because he feels inexplicably like he let her down, and it’s eating him up inside. 

“Only because I accidentally made you an accomplice to a prosecutable offence!”

“It was pretty eager for a pity kiss.”

“How was I supposed to know that falling into bed with you after a bad day would have you falling in love with me!”

Her breath catches. He finishes off the rest of his second drink.

“Sorry,” she says. “I didn’t mean –“

“It’s okay,” he says. He wants to tell her that it started before that for him; looking at it now like unspooling a film reel. “It was actually the mismatched shoes that did it for me,” he says flatly instead. 

She sniffles, and he chances a glance at her, her teeth dug into her bottom lip, biting it white. 

“I guess the world just wasn’t ready,” she says, and Dan knows she means them, then wonders if they’re not the same thing. “I’m gonna –“ 

“Blair?” he says. She stops, but she doesn’t look up. “It was nice while it lasted.”

Her lashes flutter, chin dipping, and then she’s gone, slipping between the cracks of the suited walls of the crowd. Not with a bang but. 

*

He lingers in front of the elevator after the doors close, wondering if he shouldn’t just turn around now. He hears footsteps from down the hall, recognizing them as hers right away, the light padding that starred as the background noise to his last few weeks. She’s still in her cocktail dress, but her feet are bare and her hair’s the slightest bit displaced, her eyes tinged red. 

“What are you doing here?”

“I don’t want to break up,” he blurts out, because apparently the speech he’d written on the elevator ride up got wiped clean the second he saw her. She blinks at him for a beat, then smiles. The Queen of the Met Steps smile. Something akin to the cat that got the cream.

“It’s a good thing we were never really dating, then.”

It should sting, probably, but with that proud little smile making an appearance, he knows she’s just goading him. 

“The thing is, I don’t want to go back home and have you not be there.”

“That sounds like quite the problem for you,” she says, swaying a step towards him. 

“I think it concerns you, too,” he says, meeting her in the middle. “Given the whole  _ really good head _ thing.”

Blair’s lips purse, rolling her eyes. When he reaches out, she takes his hand. 

“I suppose if we didn’t want to break up, then we would need to start dating first,” she says. 

“Well, if you  _ suppose.” _

Her free hand curls in the lapel of his coat, tugging him forward, then smoothes up to thread through the hair at the base of his skull. 

“Screw the world,” he says. “We’ll figure it out. I’m ready.”

He steadies her with an arm around her waist as she tips up on her toes, rose-golden in the hazy light from the french doors. 

“You’re a sap,” she mumbles, kissing him.

  
  


**Author's Note:**

> another stressful week another little episode au <3 title from i didn’t like you when i met you by danez smith


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